Page 1 of Again, In Autumn

Chapter One

“I need you, Vienna,” Francesca says through the phone. “You owe me this.”

I don’t owe her a thing, but my older sister will never accept that argument, even if I laid out the facts like a hardened police detective who spent the last forty-eight hours on a stakeout.

Francesca perceives the world through her lens. She’d never accept my photographic proof.

She says, “What’s that sound?”

What’s that smell?

“Shit!” I squeal, hurrying into my tiny kitchen. “Oh, no, no, no!”

Wrapped in a blanket scarf, an old UGA shirt skirting bare knees, my sock-covered feet slide to a stop. I toss the phone on the counter and open the oven, coughing and batting away the grayish smoke that rises from burnt banana bread.

I never burn anything.

This is a sign.

Setting the pitiful loaf on the stovetop, I put the phone on speaker and growl, “Fran, I just burned my first ever baked good because I couldn’t hear the oven timer over the loudness of my thoughts.”

“Maybe you need to get your hearing checked,” she says.

I counter, “Maybe I need to spend my Thanksgiving break relaxing at home, like I intended.”

“Don’t be so selfish,” she snaps. A door closes somewhere in her house and Francesca calls out, “Grayson, it is 10:00 at night! Go. To. Sleep.”

To me, she groans, “These kids already think they’re on vacation. It’s going to be the longest fucking week of my life and if you don’t come to the lake with us, I’ll always hold you a little bit responsible for whatever they complain to their therapists about in twenty years.”

Well, I’ve got some grievances to air out myself. I think I’ll crash their appointments.

Since I baked this banana bread for my three-year-old niece and five-year-old nephew, I consider the ways in which the universe is holding me back from a weekend at the lake.

Could I use this as an excuse?

Sorry, Fran, I can’t make it. I don’t have a loaf of Mom’s famous banana bread for the kids. They will riot.

I can’t go out – cough, cough – I’m sick.

Francesca doesn’t wait for me to say a word. She continues, “Don’t make me do this alone, Vee.”

“Fran –”

“I don’t know what your problem is with Captain’s Lake, but it’s beautiful in the Fall. You won’t have to do anything but drink coffee on the dock, look out at the crystal clear lake and the mountains, feel the cool breeze drift damp red leaves onto your lap…”

Her voice trails off romantically, as if romance will wrap me in her lasso and pull me into the image she just described.

Romance is the opposite of what I want.

Romance is the problem.

Leaving the charred edges of my sacrifice, I return to the scene of the distraction: in my bedroom, Netflix on the TV, an empty suitcase on the bed. I pick up a half-full wine glass from the dresser.

I start, “It’s just that –”

She interrupts, “Dave will do all of the cooking. Well, he’ll do most of the cooking, he’s not as good as you, but you’ll barely have to lift a single finger.”

She doesn’t even know she’s lying.

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